The cohabitation of authoritarian pedagogy and education in nature in the ‘Umberto di Savoia’ open-air school in Milan (1936-1943).

Abstract

The ‘Umberto di Savoia’ open-air school in Milan, founded in 1922 at the initiative of the city's first socialist administration and expression of a hygienic sensibility and pedagogical vision inspired to progressive education, was soon subjugated to the propaganda aims of Fascism, which exhibited it as the ‘jewel in the crown’ of the Milanese education system. This contribution aims to describe how the regime's anthropological project, of which Angelo Brighenti, the school's headmaster since December 1936, is a zealous supporter, is declined in a context structurally devoted to an exquisitely libertarian approach: through the documents of the school's recently renovated Historical Archive, the traits of a forced coexistence between teaching in nature and the increasingly pervasive elements of Fascist orthodoxy will emerge, emblematically represented by the set of rituals, postures and framings that use the large park as a theatre.